National Public Radio reporter Robert Krulwich had a problem when he first started interviewing people on air: He would slip into imitations of people’s accents. In Texas, he started talking like a Texan. With a government official from Eastern Europe, he’d start sounding like the cartoon Russians on The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends.
I have never had an unintentional accent problem. But anyone who has interviewed people for a living will recognize the peril here. You want to connect with people in conversation. It’s natural to connect by signaling, Yeah, me too. But if you do that, the focus of the conversation shifts. You don’t want it to be about you.
A good reporter learns to create a little distance. You position yourself that way to ask people to explain stuff and work to draw them out. It makes for better interviews. It better serves the reader or listener. It teaches the interviewers to go into conversations asking themselves what they don’t know. Also, not to pretend like they’re from Texas.
